HOWTO run your blog on github for free
I have been meaning to do this for a long time. I used to run my blog on a WordPress instance in bluehost.com and it was painful to keep the wordpress site up to date and I finally gave up and stopped blogging altogether. I am now back online using github pages to blog and what follows is a quick howto on getting you up and running on github pages. And the whole setup is completely free.
Github Pages allows you to host a static site directly from your github repository. It uses the Jekyll static website generator.
Before we get started, you will need the following pre requisites:
- Docker community edition for your platform. We will use docker to run Jekyll locally when you are authoring a new blog post or adding pages to your site.
- Free disqus account. You will need a disqus account if you want the option for people to leave comments on your blog posts.
Start with a new repository in your github account with the same name as your blog url, for eg., mine is chandraonline.github.io. Your repository name should be your your-username.github.io.
Copy over the files from the Scaffold Repository to your repository to get started with your own blog. You can either clone the scaffold directory and copy over the files or download the zip file from github.
Setting up disqus comments
Head over to disqus.com and create a new site. You will find install instructions for jekyll which you can follow to get the universal embed code. You should then copy the embed code in _includes/comments.html and change the disqus site name in _layouts/default.html.
Configuring your blog
You can update _config.yml to configure the blog title, author etc.
To test the jekyll site, simply run :
docker-compose up
You should be able to go to http://0.0.0.0:4000 and test your blog locally.
When you make changes to your posts or add new posts , it will show up in the local site automagically. If you are not seeing changes in the local site (for eg when you do changes to _config.yml, simply remove all files under _site/ and restart with the docker-compose up.
Once you are satisfied with the changes , you can push the changes to github.com and it will automatically build the jekyll site and make it available at your-user-name.github.io.